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Finding A Great Writer For Your Content

In a previous article, we discussed the need for good written content that works well with the design, form, and function of the website you created. But, as a designer, what’s the best way to find a good, qualified writer to produce the content you need? Do you know where to look? Do you know how to choose a qualified writer? Let’s discuss some ideas of how to secure the services of a good, qualified writer.

Content is king. Everyone agrees that content is what keeps a site visitor in place and coming back time after time. So, how do you find a writer to create the content that will “establish dominion over the domain” that you have designed? One of my first recommendations is to ask for referrals. Ask a fellow designer that you admire who he/she uses to write their content.  Another thing I recommend is to try and use someone locally. If you can find a writer locally that you can work well with, it will be advantageous to you in the long run. Having the ability to meet face to face if needed, easily, can be a big plus on larger, more detailed projects. It’s not a completely critical component when searching for a writer…just an added bonus if you can find one locally.

Where’s the best place to look? Beyond word of mouth referrals, one of the best places to search out good content writers is by using several good websites: Craigslist, Elance, Guru, and Online-Writing-Jobs.com. These three are at the top of my list for find good writers. There are a lot of freelance writers who use Craigslist to advertise their services (it’s a free ad for most of them, why not use it!).

While you’re looking for a writer, do you know what type of content you need to have written? Make sure you have defined exactly what you need. Make sure you know what makes up good web content. In a nutshell, it’s written content that does four things:

• Grabs the readers attention
• Builds their interest in the topic being discussed
• Creates a desire for the reader to engage
• Motivates the reader (call to action)

The content on any webpage (primarily the home page) only has seconds to implement those four components!

Once you have found a writer that is of interest to you, ask for samples of their writing. When reviewing their previous work, look at it with those four aspects in mind. It’s okay to ask for samples and links to articles or websites where their work can be viewed. If they don’t have a way for you to read their previous work and you want to give them a chance, ask them to write a sample article for you. BUT, make sure you pay them for it. It’s rude to ask someone to work for free. You wouldn’t design two or three web pages for free would you? Just ask them to write a sample article for you and offer to pay them a flat rate for it.

Make sure that the writer in question can deliver your desired content in the proper time frame too. Keep in mind that most freelance writers have multiple clients and other projects they are working on simultaneously. Generally speaking, the more time you allow a writer for a project, the better it will fit into your budget.

Outline what you want written and accomplished, be specific in your details, be clear with your deadline, and ask for a specific price. It’s also a wise idea to ask the writer to include at least one round of revision in their pricing too. This allows you to be able to modify and adjust the content once the writer has delivered it to you without incurring additional costs. Once your price is set and agreed to, it’s not uncommon for a new writer to ask for a 50% deposit. It’s a safety net for the writer since he/she hasn’t done work for you previously. If things go well and you start using the same writer over and over for multiple projects, this shouldn’t necessarily have to occur each time. But, for the first project, it’s not an unreasonable request.

Following these recommendations will set you on a good course for procuring the services of a good content writer. We’ll delve into this subject more over time in future articles. There are certain pitfalls and dangers that need to be avoided when using sites like Guru and Elance. We’ll discuss those as well as define in detail what makes up good web content. If you have other recommendations, as always, please let me know and we’ll discuss them!

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99 Sites ALL Designers Must Know About

Extensive list of resources for web designers (and other creative types). Inspirational, tools, ideas, examples, all that and more.

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This May Hurt The Web Services Business

It appears that Amazon.com isn’t happy with just being the largest online retailer. So, what’s their plan? They’re now going after the web services market. That’s right…Amazon Web Services is now selling storage, computing power and other data center services.

Their idea is to slash how much Internet startup companies have to spend on infrastructure. Their system, the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), allows customers to quickly start up a virtual computer in the “cloud” (industry slang for worldwide data centers), use it as a web server or for processing data, and have the ability to shut it down quickly. The system is billed out “utility” style, similar to your electricity bill. The more data that is sent and received, the higher your bill will be at the end of the month.

So, the obvious question here is: What does all this mean to you and me? The answer…is complicated. In the short term, it means unfortunate “big box style” competition from a company with huge name/brand recognition in a field that many of us have spent a lot of painstaking time in refining our skills. Their foray into this market sector is going to create headaches for many web designers, IT staffers, and system/network administrators. Are people going to lose their jobs? Probably. At the least, there will be fewer jobs available.

When I first read about Amazon’s plan, my first reaction was, “why?”. They aren’t satisfied with reporting billions of dollars in sales each quarter? For a long time now, Amazon.com has been touted as a “niche” market leader and a company founded on The Long Tail economic principle (we’ve even written about it here in this blog). Now though, it looks as if they are trying to cover every niche they can possibly find. Why? The only answer I keep coming back to is comprised of one word: greed. Nothing else really makes sense other than sheer greed. The fat cat just wants to get fatter. CNN.com had a story about Amazon’s plan and used a quote which I think sums it up fittingly: “It is hard to get your head around: ‘Why is this retailer that ships me toys for my kids for Christmas … also my supplier of IT services?” Does not compute…

To add more fuel to the fire, Wal-Mart has also announced that it is now providing SEO and SEM services. Oy Vey! Cut-rate SEO and SEM?  Yep, $25/month and $50/month packages are what they are promoting. What exactly is a business owner hoping to achieve by enlisting Wal-mart to optimize and promote their website? In the long run, this might prove advantageous to good, qualified SEO and SEM companies and individuals. One approach might be, “So, you tried the budget approach to promoting your website with Wal-Mart and it didn’t yield results, huh? Well, why don’t you give us a shot and see how REAL SEO/SEM works.” Good grief.

After reading about these two giants entering into the web services industry, my mind started to wander off, words such as ‘monopoly’ and ‘antitrust’ began emerging. What force drives these two companies to enter into a market sector that lies completely out of their normal scope of business? Well, again, greed comes to mind along with control, manipulation, and power. Keep in mind that none of those words are real consumer friendly.

In my opinion, this is a trend pointing us toward an oligopoly, in which four or five large companies compete against each other in an individual market – that market being the Internet. Right now, we have three…maybe four big players (Amazon, Wal-Mart, Yahoo!, and Google).

While doing some research about oligopolies, I came across an article that was written about the Microsoft antitrust suit and thought it contained some nuggets of relevance for what is taking place with Amazon and Wal-Mart.

“The economy is so much bigger today that even its largest companies play a smaller role than U.S. Steel, Standard Oil or AT&T did a century ago. The Microsoft case cannot have as much economy-shaking impact. Technology also seems to be moving sufficiently rapidly to make whatever antitrust remedy is reached in that case of doubtful relevance: The market and the industry will have changed too much. The smaller impact of any single case and the difficulty of keeping pace with changing technology may end up making judicial antitrust remedies irrelevant. Perhaps courts and prosecutors will try to maintain the standard pattern: Tolerate oligopoly, break up monopoly. If so, antitrust authorities will have a busy time as they watch economies of scale create a dominant natural monopoly in sector after sector, then move to break up the monopoly and restore competition. Will such a pattern lead to an efficient and productive economy? We are not sure.

A second possible direction would be to have greater tolerance for monopolies that played fair: to focus on establishing and monitoring a code of conduct for information-age natural monopolies that allows us to reap all the efficiency benefits of bigness and still maintain a degree of virtual, if not real, competition. But can such a code of standard-setting friendliness be specified and enforced? We are not sure.” (http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TotW/microsoft_history.html)

For now, my suggestion is this: network hard with everyone you know and develop a strong, happy core of customers who are pleased with your services. Get out in your local community and let people know about your services. On the local level, there is fortunately still an element of loyalty in working with other local service providers. Use this to your advantage! Encourage word of mouth referrals, join your local Chamber of Commerce if necessary and get the word out to potential customers. Promote your business and services as much as possible. The bottom line in all of this too is that you need to do your job well, thoroughly, and honestly. Your reputation will be about the only edge you will be able to use to battle these two companies.  

Let me know your thoughts on the announcements from Amazon.com and Wal-Mart. I’d like to hear other suggestions on how you plan to handle their ‘intrusion’ into a highly targeted, customer specific (SEO and SEM), labor intensive, technical field that doesn’t lend itself to flat rate pricing and impersonal handling.

TwoSpots website design company - Website Design, Web Develop, VRML, Flash and Graphic Design Company

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3D Web Technology – Where is it heading and how useful is it today?

Three dimensional web design programs are definitely still in the infant/toddler stage of life; however, it is a sector of web design that deserves mention. While in its current stage, some 3D systems still have a certain ‘cheese factor’, there are some interesting and emerging developments to keep an eye on in 2008. Some 3D developments are very advanced and are exciting to watch. These are very high end systems that large companies such as Google and IBM are funding. Some, like PaperVision 3D, are smaller group efforts that, while they are making significant strides forward, aren’t really something that will be incorporated into too many websites right now. However, they are definitely a sector of design that deserves to be watched closely over the next year.

One of the first things that I wonder about regarding 3D design is its relevance to the web as far as design, form, and function are concerned. In many ways, I see it directly conflicting with everything that has become important to the Internet. Web 2.0, along with virtually every other facet of web design today, is centered on simplicity & design. It’s completely focused on the user’s ability to interact with and make use of a website. So, how does the incorporation of 3D fit into this concept? As far as ‘Web 2.0’ is concerned, this is way behind the design times. Another designer aptly described it this way: “It looks like the old Atari systems when compared to X-Box. It has great potential but it’s not there yet.” Most 3D applications are still very slow loading, which is a major turn off to most users. The public is accustomed to quick loading pages. In general, most people won’t stay on the page long enough for it to load. We discussed in an earlier article that as a web designer, you have about 7 seconds to ‘hook’ someone into staying on a website. There aren’t any 3D applications that load in that amount of time. So, at the moment, it’s not something that you would want to incorporate into the home page of any website.

One area that has been benefitting from 3D technology though is the entertainment sector. The open-ended 3D virtual world platform, Second Life, now has over 2.5 million participating accounts. The global market for asset trading, object creation, and services rendered in virtual worlds is estimated at anywhere from $700 million to $2 billion per year. Social networking sites like GaiaX entice their users in Japan into online games and virtual worlds as just one of many social options. The entertainment genre is growing leaps and bounds as far as its use of 3D is concerned. But, how is 3D design being incorporated into the professional and commercial sectors of the web?

Other areas that are rapidly under development are the medical sector, 3D navigation, and online education. In the simulation space, virtual humans are being explored for their online educational ability. 3D navigation systems are emerging in the automotive market in Japan and Europe. Modeling systems like ArcGIS, Google Earth, and SketchUp are allowing us to create “mirror world” versions of physical space. The medical genre is one to really watch. IBM is working on 3D representation of the human body. Imagine walking into to your next doctor’s visit and watching your doctor evaluate the health of your heart in a real time, high resolution 3D visualization. This is one from a list that IBM calls the “The Next 5 in 5.” Read more about their goals here. (http://www.ibm.com/sandbox/homepage/version-b/)

While all of these 3D systems are not the same, they are related. Some are far more advanced than others. For now, while things are still ‘under construction’ in the world of 3D design, I prefer to stick with the KISS (keep it simple stupid) method. Commercial applications for 3D just aren’t quite what they should be for use by web designers in my opinion. I look forward to watching it though and seeing how it continues to be refined. If you see certain uses for emerging 3D programs that I have missed here, please feel free to comment about it. I would enjoy discussing and evaluating your ideas.

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What Web Designers May Not Know About Links

A Successful Home Page is a Link Rich Page

Recently I read an article about the rise and success of link rich home pages over the past several years. After reading through it and processing the information, I thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of the ideas that were brought forth in that article. It’s especially useful for web designers because we are in the business of building successful websites for our clients. So, this article and the following discussion about it could really be classified as one of those ‘magic lanterns’ I referred to in an earlier article. I don’t think that David Ogilvy will mind if we adopt his term for classifying this useful information.

Mr. Spool, the author of the original article used Dove soap’s home page as a ‘link poor’ example. He then alluded to how well their site map was arranged so that visitors could “find their way” to the information they were seeking. In essence he was saying that Dove’s home page should be more like their site map page. We have previously emphasized over and over again the need for simplicity in a site’s form and function. While the suggestion of creating a link rich home page may seem to go against that concept, it doesn’t have to at all.

“Nobody starts their design with the objective, ‘We need our home page to be as complex as we can possibly make it.’ On the contrary, everybody wants to build simple designs. Yet, somewhere along the line, simplicity translated into ‘Provide as few links on the home page as possible.’”

This quote sums up the problem well. It also targets exactly what we need to do to make a site successful for the end users. This is another one of those cases where we need to make sure that our focus is on what is best for the site users. It’s a complex negotiation between pleasing the client you are designing the website for while at the same time ensuring that the end user has a website that will work well for them too.

News websites have long understood the need to provide multiple links on their home pages. The majority of news sites are loaded with links designed to deliver in-depth information to users. CNN, Fox and many major newspaper sites have hundreds of links displayed on their home page. Is it too many? Take a look at the sites listed below and check out their standings.

*The Bureau of Labor and Statistics website isn’t a news site. However, it is a good example of a home page that is comprised entirely of links. While this site is very narrow in its appeal, it is heavily used as you can see from its rankings.

Judging from the rankings shown above for these link rich sites, it’s a good choice to include many links on your homepage. However, my advice would be to take a look at the manner in which links are displayed on these sites. They are done tastefully. So essentially what I’m saying is that you can still maintain the simplistic design approach while at the same time creating a ‘link rich environment’ which will perform well for the end users of the website.

This is also good reference material for you to use when discussing site creation with a potential client. Please feel free to use the information in this article to point out the need to create a great looking, link rich home page on your client’s website. Hopefully this information will help them understand just how important it is for them to allow you to create a home page that will grab a user’s attention and provide them with a wealth of information at the same time in an easy to use, easy to navigate format.

If you have other examples of good, link rich home pages for other websites, please let me know. I’d like to take a look at them and possibly review them here in the blog.

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Hot New Website Killed By Poor Content

Web design is a great occupational field. It’s full of opportunity. At times it’s overwhelming due to the high demand for good, quality driven web designers. But I’m just wondering…doesn’t it ‘irk’ you sometimes when you have put together a great looking, customer oriented, feature packed website only to see the client fill their web pages with junk? They paid for a great website and killed it with poor content. What can you do about it? One suggestion is to add the ability to create web content for your customers too.

When you do a search on Google for ‘web content’, it generates close to 200,000,000 results. It’s obviously an important topic. Because of this, my recommendation is to seek out and team up with a good copywriter. Look for and secure the services of a qualified writer who can create relevant, readable, well formed text that will complement your web design services. Keep in mind that the text they create needs to assist in keeping customers on the website. I’ll discuss some of the critical components of content in another article soon. Add appropriate pricing and encourage clients to let you help them create verbiage and content that works well for their company. There are a myriad of companies out there that post their prices for creating content on their websites. Make sure your pricing is competitive and ensure the customer that putting together an entire package all at the same time is beneficial to them.

As an example of how well great design and great content work together, I wanted to use a friend’s site to point out the effectiveness of this approach. PrintBusinessCards.com is a site that has been around since 2000. This site re-launched in 2006 with a completely new design. At the same time, they immediately started publishing good, relevant pages full of good content related to their industry…business cards. Over an 8 month period their page rank has increased, their Alexa ranking has dramatically increased…breaking them into the top 100,000, and their pages come up higher in Google searches across the board. All of this is a result of huge organic growth and has ultimately boosted sales dramatically at the same time. This site is a prime example of filling a website with great, relevant content. At the same time, they also launched a blog where they have consistently published good business cards related articles, relevant tips, announcements about new pages, and press releases. The blog has become another good contributor for attracting customers to their site. The blog is well written and always points readers to various features of their main website. Again, this is a prime example of creating good content that benefits the customer. Blogs are a great way to build long term results for clients. It takes time though. The general consensus is at least a year of good, consistent articles on a blog before the main site starts seeing results. This is true for PrintBusinessCards.com too. Their blog now has a page rank of 3 and is climbing on its own through the rankings while at the same time funneling quite a few potential customers every day to the main site. Design, function, and content. These 3 critical components are all displayed on this site. Their presence on the web is increasing everyday. It’s a great example of how teaming up with a good copywriter can enhance the design and function of a website.

So, as web designers, my recommendation is to include the creation of good, relevant, quality content as part of your pricing and services. In doing this, you should attract more customers while creating more satisfied customers at the same time. Again, as I mentioned before, I plan on discussing some of the critical components that are comprised in quality content for any website. If you have other examples of websites where content, function, and design work together very well, please let me know. I’d like to check it out!

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Five Common Website Navigation Styles

Here we go again, a list of navigation styles. Navigation is one of the most important elements on a website. If it’s not right all the effort that you put into the site may be worthless. So here’s five major styles that I came up with. I know there are many more out there but these are the most common ones that I see.
 

One

The source site for this is: http://www.trustile.com

An example of a simple graphic based hover style navigation. It is simple to impliment and is easy to use. Got to remember that most times simple is best - KISS (I won’t even go into it) .
 

Two

The source site for this is: http://www.amazon.com

We’ve looked at this one several days ago in the Recipe For Effective Navigation post and again this one made the list. It is complicated to build but once done, it’s worth the effort. It eliminates two clicks from the visitor’s search which raises the conversion rate.
 

Three

http://www.boite-a-musique.org

A text based navigation is the simplest one on the list but on the effectivness scale it may or mey not be better then the image based navigation. Again the KISS element, simplicity works well.
 

Four

The source site for this is: http://www.lexus.com

Now we’re getting into some serious, multi-function navigation. Here, we’re looking at a Lexus website’s navigation bar. Each “section” has multiple hot areas that trigger diferent drop down menus, I guess in most cases it’s not a menu that drops down but a sort of a mini web page. Personally I think I’d stear away from navigation like this.
 

Five

The source site for this is: http://www.32round.com

Ok, this one may not look cool or impressive (I am talking about the navigation) but once you click one of the buttons it’ll get your attention. Another way of getting your visitor’s attention I guess. I like the site, nice scrolling effect on it too.

I’d love to hear some of your opinions on these.

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A Look at 10 of the 50 Best Websites of 2007

I decided to take the top 10 sites from Time Magazine’s 50 Best Sites of 2007 and briefly review each of them here.  I think we can all benefit from analyzing each of these sites. In doing so,  perhaps we will glean some ideas that we can incorporate into web designs for  our clients in the future.

	Mozy.com – Awesome concept. I’m going to check this one out further. This is a very user friendly, informative website offering a fantastic service for a low price. 2gigs of storage online for $4.95/month is a good deal!
	StumbleUpon.com —This is a site I use myself currently. As a social media site, it allows you to tag and recommend sites to other people. It will also generate recommendations for you based upon your interests. It’s inherently user focused and a great way to promote sites or particular pages on a website.
	Last.fm – Finally, your own customizable radio station on the web. Last.fm allows you to type in the name of your favorite artist and be listening to them in just a few seconds through your browser. As long as your browser stays open…the music keeps crankin’. To gain the full experience, you need to register with them which will allow you to further customize   the system for your listening pleasure. It’s a great site full of features for their listeners. Their site has a nice clean look to it. Their logo is a simple, yet effective design too.
	Weebly.com – This is one we won’t necessarily refer our customers to visit. This is a free website building tool. It gives people the ability to create websites and build blog platforms in a WYSIWYG style. There are templates, formats, designs, and functions here that might be helpful and useful to check out.
	Etsy.com – Here’s a niche marketing website that’s a good example of putting The Long Tail philosophy into action. Etsy is dedicated to selling products that are handmade. This is an extremely popular site for artisans and crafters looking for a way to ply their wares globally. Its design is simple, easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye. It’s definitely an appealing   website which justifies its position on this list.
	Wotartist.com – Another niche site. Wotartist is dedicated to promoting abstract art from artists all over the world. It’s a beautifully designed site. All of the navigation for the site is reduced to one corner in order to free up space for displaying artwork on the main page. I like the design of this site a lot. This site is full of awesome artwork. This simple design let’s the artwork be the focus instead of the site. Awesome concept.
	Fatsecret.com – This social networking site is dedicated to helping people drop unwanted weight. By capitalizing on a universal problem, this site has created a huge following by allowing people to discuss what works for them, swap recipes, and encourage each other to their goals. The site is completely geared towards interactivity and information. People can get really personal   by sharing their journal entries, charting their weight and goals publicly on their member page. It’s a site that encourages people to step out, be bold and share their desire to lose weight. There are some good ideas that can be derived from its design and its ability to let users create charts and graphs to track their success.
	Netvibes.com – This is a cool site. Netvibes puts everything you want from the web onto one very customizable page. Customizable modules allow the user to check email, display RSS or Atom feeds, display news sites, weather, and just about anything else you can think of. Netvibes is a prime example of Web 2.0. Everything about the site is focused on the user. It’s completely customizable allowing everyone the ability to create their own, unique home page for the Internet. There are many great tidbits here for designers. Great site!
	Chow.com – A tasty website all about good food. This site covers food, recipes, food culture, and basically everything you can think of that involves food. It allows users to receive their content in multiple ways (audio, video, photos, blogs, podcasts, boards, etc.). It’s a “themed social networking site” that gives users the opportunity to interact with others revolving around a common subject…food.
	OhDon’tForget.com – For all you text messagers out there, this is an easy way to keep your friends and contacts up to date with what’s happening in your life. Probably the neatest feature on here is the ability to schedule a time and date to have specific messages sent out to specific people. The site has some pretty cool features. Its scope is pretty narrow by only focusing   on text messaging. But, the services it provides for users is excellent, which is why it’s a top ten finisher on this list!

Each of these sites is unique and extremely focused on achieving a particular task or service. Every single one of them is full of user friendly features.  The combination of focus, use-ability, and excellent design is what makes each  of them successful in their particular niche. Each one of them has something  to offer the web designer as well. Designers should take a look at each of these  sites as prime examples of how to create websites that are beneficial to the  end user.

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Recipe For Effective Navigation

While surfing the web to come up with some ideas to write about this morning I stumbled onto this Study of Website Navigation Methods Paper that Fidelity Investments firm in Boston Massachusetts did while developing their website. So I did some more digging around on Website Navigation and found some interresting studies and ideas.

The Yahoo-style and Drop Down menu, both, scored low on the error report. That is a good score, in case you’re wondering. I personally would agree that over the other styles, I’d preffer these two. Honestly, I never thought about the Yahoo-style navigation while designing a website before but this actually is great, the visitor gets to see all the sub-directories, which gets him one click closer to the destination.

Drop Down menu is very easy for a fellow visitor to find their way around, the sub-categories are visible without having to click or change the page, and remember, web surfers are lazy, less clicks, less pages to go through, equals more conversions. There are some negative things about the Drop Down menus if you are not an advanced drop down menu creator. The problem is broken menus, which turn into lost business. I’ll talk about that in a bit.

According to the Clickstream Study done by University of Hamburg, top-left half of a web page is premium realestate - this is where over three quarters (76.5%) clicks happen. This also is what happens with eye tracking studies done by Hotchkiss and Nielsen. They both follow a simmilar F-shape pattern. This tells us that the best place to put our navigation is within that area, top-left half of the page.

A few other issues come up when designing navigation is the speed and functionality. The navigation style that you choose has to keep up with the speed of web navigation. With the high-speed internet acces available to most now-a-days, the hover buttons, pop-out and drop-down menus have to be lightning fast to keep up. Before the site goes live it should be tested, re-tested and tested again. Run it in several browsers, on various operating systems, make sure it works before it’s unleashed. There are so many broken navigations out there, so much resources wasted and business lost when it is so easy to prevent it by testing.

Lots of discussion going on about what a navigation link or just a link on a page should look like, many strong opinionated individuals will tell you that they religiously believe that their way is right. From what I’ve seen on forums and around the web the standard underlined link is the most effective. Using a pale dotted line to underline is another nice way to specify a link. There was time when leaving a link without the underline, looking like a “small sentence” was cool but that time has come and gone. I think that you have to use your own judgement and decide what will look good and do the job it’s intended to do. What will speak to the user, make their “trip” through your website memmorable, deliver what they are loking for and make them come back later for more. When it comes to in-body links, someone suggested placing links in the footnote, to keep the user from leaving the page before reading it to the end. Personally, I don’t know about that, it sounds like an annoyance to me.

When designing a website, it helps to remember to apply the (KISS) “keep it simple stupid” element.

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What Makes Amazon So Successful?

I have mentioned Amazon many different times in previous articles and now I want to start analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. Tackling such an e-commerce giant can be a bit overwhelming in some respects, however it’s necessary to look at their successes and failures to see what should possibly be replicated in projects that come up for us as web designers. Amazon is one of those web giants that is loved by some, hated by others, but used by all whenever necessary. So, how does Amazon do it? What makes them such a massive, successful presence on the web? Let’s find out!

Amazon has built its business slowly and methodically (founded in 1994 and launched in 1995, posting their first profits in 2002). The original concept was simply to sell books online; however it quickly branched out into other diverse products. In fact, many other large retail companies now use Amazon to power and host their websites (Borders, Virgin Megastores, Target, Sears and many more). It seems that these companies have adopted the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em strategy.” In a nutshell, the Amazon system works. It works so well that Amazon.com attracts over 50 million visitors every month from just the United States alone.

Even though the Amazon website is so humongous, they create a personal feel for every user. Every time I log in, they have suggestions for me based on my previous orders or searches. Sometimes I think…’how nice’ while at other times I think, ‘I’d never buy that item.’ The point I’m trying to make here though is that they are engineering their site toward one thing…THE END USER. The list of ‘benefits’ offered to the customer is pretty lengthy. Yes, all of these benefits are geared toward the goal of making money for Amazon…but isn’t that the reason capitalism and free enterprise exist? Yes, they are trying to make a buck…but their approach is user friendly. Customer product reviews, shipping discounts, their own credit card with bonuses, Amazon Prime membership, 1-Click ordering, product forums, etc. are all great ways to get the customer involved. Amazon’s goal isn’t just to be a place to purchase items. Their goal is to make it an experience…a good experience. They want it to be an experience that people will want to be involved in over and over again.

Amazon has become a ‘one stop Internet shopping destination.’ Because of their appeal, they now have over 900,000 associates (their term for affiliate marketing companies). Simply put…you can buy almost anything on Amazon. You can usually get it at a reasonable price too. With their adherence to The Long Tail economic principle, they also give people easy access to hard to find items as well. Sometimes these are specialized products that aren’t available in your nearest brick and mortar store. This ability to offer people hard to locate items simply by searching on one website is of great comfort to millions of people around the world. “Can’t find it at the store? Look on Amazon.” I know of several families who live in remote areas of Alaska within the Arctic Circle who use Amazon as their grocery store…because they don’t have a local grocery store. They order their supplies through the Internet and pick them up at the airport. It’s a pretty awesome setup for them. This is just one of many different niches that Amazon fills. The cumulative total of these small niches results in posting revenues like the ones they posted in 2006 ($10.7 billion).

From the customer end of things, Amazon’s site is simple in appearance and simple to use. The order process is easy. This is the most critical component of their entire site. Keeping the ordering process uncomplicated is what really makes customers return. If you were to only use two key components of Amazon’s site and replicate them into your own site or your next customer’s site, they would be customer features and simplicity in giving the customer results. Whether those results are retail oriented or information oriented, keeping the process simple will in the long run create happier visitors on the site. Whether you love or hate Amazon, you have to recognize the fact that they are successful as a website. In recognizing that, look at what you can use from their example to make the next website you design a successful one.

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